Raw domestic wastewater commonly generates offensive odors, especially at warmer temperatures, in collection systems and primary clarifiers at the wastewater treatment plant, combined sewer overflows, storage tanks, lagoons, and effluents in a sewage system. The reason for generation of offensive odors is that the demand for dissolved oxygen by the microbes in the wastewater greatly exceeds the rate that dissolved oxygen is absorbed into the wastewater. The main odor source at a municipal wastewater treatment plant is the effluent of the primary clarifier. This is because the raw wastewater resides in the primary clarifier for over 1 to 4 hours under anaerobic conditions. Under these anaerobic conditions, the microbes reduce sulfate to sulfide which causes the offensive odors. Thus, when the effluent spills down the 2 to 24 inches over the effluent weirs, the hydrogen sulfide is readily stripped out of solution. Consequently, many municipalities cover their primary clarifiers, pull off the foul off gas and scrub it of the offensive odors. This solution results in high capital cost, as well as high operating costs.
Even though it is widely recognized that oxygen deficiency in the wastewater is the root cause of the malodorous and corrosive condition, providing sufficient dissolved oxygen has not been possible, because the rags and stringy material in the raw wastewater quickly plug conventional gas transfer equipment. Furthermore, the low oxygen content in air (21%) makes it impossible to raise the dissolved oxygen above 9 mg per liter in wastewater at 25° C. Furthermore, conventional aeration systems are very efficient at stripping out the volatile offensive sulfide complements. For instance, coarse bubble aerators generate 99 ft.3 of off gas for each 1 ft.3 of oxygen dissolved at 5% oxygen absorbed efficiency characteristic of coarse bubble aerators. Surface aerators have even greater stripping potential for sulfide. Therefore, these conventional systems cannot be used to aerate raw domestic wastewater without exacerbating the odors.
In order to prevent odor and corrosion in collection and primary clarifiers, it has been found that wastewater should be superoxygenated from about 10 mg per liter to about 60 mg per liter or higher of dissolved oxygen. There is a widespread myth that (1) it is not possible to achieve such high dissolved oxygen concentrations in raw municipal wastewater, and (2) that if such levels were achieved, they would quickly effervesce out of solution from the wastewater. High purity oxygen (“HPO”) has a water saturation concentration about five times that of air (40 mg per liter at 25° C.). Furthermore, HPO is expensive, and economic considerations make it preferable to utilize an oxygen dissolving system that is highly efficient and has low unit energy consumption per ton of dissolved oxygen.
The only attempts to use high purity oxygen for odor and corrosion prevention in raw municipal wastewater for gravity sewers, primary clarifiers, collection sewage overflows, tanks and lagoons have used gaseous oxygen injection from a diffuser in the inlet piping. However, the applications of this method have resulted in only 40% oxygen absorption. This makes the process uneconomical, and creates an explosion hazard with such high purity oxygen in a confined space. It has thus been considered that only liquid alternative oxidants, such as hydrogen peroxide and nitrate salts and chlorine and ferric salts to precipitate sulfide, can be used for odor/corrosion prevention in collection systems and primary clarifiers at the treatment plant. These alternative oxidants cost over ten times as much as high purity oxygen, making them a less economic alternative, but these oxidants are an alternative that is used in the current absence of efficient superoxygenation techniques. This problem, coupled with the plugging problems of rags and strings, have presented such monumental problems that not one single installation in the United States is known to efficiently superoxygenate raw municipal wastewater prior to gravity sewers, primary clarifiers, or combined sewer overflows to a level of 10 to 60 mg per liter of dissolved oxygen or higher for odor and corrosion control.
Thus, large cities in the southern part of the United States spend considerable amounts for odor/corrosion control chemicals. For example, Los Angeles County spends nearly twenty (20) million dollars per year on the chemicals alone. Orange County Calif. spends about 2.5 million dollars per year for odor control chemicals such as peroxide and nitrate. Some cities inject gaseous high purity oxygen into force mains, but the low efficiency of oxygen absorption considerably increases the total cost, as well as presents an explosion hazard, because the high purity oxygen bubbles immediately rise out of the wastewater and the high purity oxygen travels along the crown of the sewer and then collects at the first high point when the grade of the pipe becomes negative. This gas space also increases the head on the pump moving water through the system. Therefore, no efficient method of superoxygenating raw municipal wastewater prior to gravity sewers, primary clarifiers, or combined sewer overflows is in use in the art, resulting in the use of costly chemicals to achieve acceptable results. Therefore, a high efficiency method and apparatus for superoxygenating raw wastewater would be beneficial.
Oxygenation has long been recognized as potentially attractive in wastewater operations. However, to make an oxygenation system economically competitive, there should be commensurate savings in energy costs for dissolving the oxygen to offset the costs for the HPO supply. Early oxygenation systems were not able to achieve significant energy reductions for they consumed about half the energy needed to dissolve a unit of oxygen compared to conventional aeration systems.
Municipal wastewater treatment plants themselves can generate offensive odors—with H2S and mercaptans being perhaps the worst offenders. Odor studies identify the effluent weirs from the primary clarifier as the major source of odor generation for municipal wastewater treatment plants. The root cause for the odor lies in the long detention times of raw wastewater and sludge in the primary clarifier in the absence of D.O.
One prior art approach taken to mitigate such offensive odors at the municipal wastewater treatment plan is to cover the primary clarifier weirs, where the odor is stripped from the primary effluent as it cascades over the effluent weirs, and to withdraw the gas under the cover through ductwork and a blower. This withdrawn gas then must be passed through a caustic chlorine scrubber or biofilter where the odor is oxidized and destroyed. Treatment of the offensive gas in this manner is costly in terms of capital cost as well as the operating costs for caustic and chlorine. Because H2S is so corrosive the cover and ductwork must be made of corrosion proof material.
Another common approach to mitigating the odor at a wastewater treatment plant is to capture and treat the offensive gases so formed. However, the use of covers on the clarifier or weirs also significantly hinder maintenance. Furthermore, every pound of oxygen consumed in the primary clarifier translates to a 1:1 corresponding reduction of oxygen demand in the aeration tank. Therefore, it is desired to provide an efficient, cost effective system for removal of odors at municipal wastewater treatment plants and at clarifiers.
A major effort is underway in many cities to collect, store and treat combined sewer overflows (CSO). Such systems generally involve the collection of a relatively large volume of CSO in a short period of time and then storing the collected CSO for a protracted period of time—a period of days to weeks—while it is pumped out through a municipal wastewater treatment plant during low flow periods. The very nature of CSO is that it can be significantly polluted in the initial “flush” with BOD concentrations of 50 to over 200 mg/L.
The challenge to meet this oxygen demand for collected CSO is significant with present aeration systems. Further, some particular design considerations emerge. Aeration does not economically permit D.O. increases above 2 to 4 mg/L. In one large Midwestern city, the proposed aeration system designed to keep the stored CSO aerobic consumed from 2000 to 4000 kwhr/ton of O2 dissolved under the most frequently occurring storage event. Furthermore, the electrical demand charge for the compressors to be turned on for a 30-minute interval twice per year alone is excessive.
If a storage basin receives a CSO storm event flow containing a BOD of 100 mg/L which has a deoxygenation constant, k1, of 0.1 per day. The D.O. uptake for the first day in this case is 21 mg/L. Because the first day is the highest rate, it establishes the design criteria for sizing the required oxygen transfer system. For a storage basin of 100 MG, the system would require approximately a 700 HP blower for coarse bubble aeration to meet this demand. Therefore, it is desire to provide an aeration system for use with collected CSOs that does not require significant capital investment to achieve appropriate levels of D.O.
Wastewater treatment lagoons commonly are utilized for treatment of industrial and intensive animal rearing wastewaters. However, because these lagoons are commonly anaerobic and generate considerable H2S, it is not unusual to require $1,000,000 to put a cover on such lagoons and treat the off-gas to mitigate odor generation.
Traditionally, aeration systems have been designed to satisfy activated sludge and aerated lagoon D.O. uptake rates of 20 to 80 mg/L-hr. The development of some of the more advanced aerobic treatment systems which use advanced cell immobilization techniques are capable of ten-fold increases in biomass concentrations. Only a properly designed oxygenation system can meet the exceptionally high oxygen uptake rates of 300 to 500 mg/L-hr inherent in these advanced aerobic processes. It is desired to provide such an oxygenation system.
Regulations requiring that treated effluents be discharged at elevated D.O. concentrations to their receiving waters are specified in some discharge permits. Conventional aeration techniques can achieve this, but do so with by requiring prohibitively high unit energy consumption and are also limited in the D.O. that can be achieved. To increase the D.O. from 0 to 7 mg/L in water at 25° C. requires approximately 2700 kwhr/ton of D.O. added using standard aeration equipment. This is equivalent to over $200/ton of D.O. for electricity rates of $0.08/kwhr. It is therefore desired to provide an aeration system that can be utilized to treat effluents to regulated levels in an energy efficient manner.